Hacker News Reader

Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> Title is misleading.. You get $1k if you decide to trade it in with Apple. Technically it’s still worth more on the second-hand market.

I think the main point of the article was the Apple's trade-in price is offensively low:

> This ultra-low value disrespects the customers.

View on HN

> This ultra-low value disrespects the customers.

Almost no consumers bought this thing. The only buyers who would be using the trade-in are companies... and then it suddenly makes more sense. You get your IRS depreciation, and a quick $1K instead of sending them to the recycling center (because it's sometimes not worth employee time to figure out eBay, handle shipments, check which ones work and how well, handle returns...).

Why would they want it? I'm surprised they offer anything.

> Why would they want it? I'm surprised they offer anything.

I was thinking the same thing as I read, and wondering if the trade-in price was just a token to get a customer to turn the machine into e-waste, but later on the article notes Apple sells similar refurbished machines for tens of thousands of dollars, a fact that I verified:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0ZKMLL/A/Refurbished-Mac...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230201183646/https://www.apple...

This kind of has the feel of a unscrupulous car salesman low-balling a trade-in to take advantage of a customer.

I wonder if the refurb stock at Apple is a result of the AppleCare-style trade-method where they give you a replacement machine and they repair the old one and then have to somehow get rid of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the trade-in program isn't actually dealt with by Apple but is actually fulfilled by a third party for Apple so they don't have to deal with it.

I expect you are right. The few times I've used Apple for a trade-in, I recall that the actual trade-in is to a third-party. I'm not at all convinced the hardware ever makes it back to Apple themselves.

The comparison to a car salesman is apt. If I were to trade in my 6 week old Model 3 to Tesla right now, they'd offer around 20 grand less than I paid them for it.

Though to be fair, that's probably true of any random car dealer, because of what Tesla did to the used market a couple weeks ago.

This is a very 2021 take. Outside the limited-time pandemic-related supply chain issues, every new car drops in value the second you drive it off the lot. Nothing to do with Tesla.

If anything, the last 2 years of sky-high used car prices have more to do with production capacity than any intrinsic value in used cars. (The value in the last 2 years coming from immediacy, not intrinsic value.)

It doesn’t disrespect customers, it’s a signal from Apple saying “we don’t want to refurbish and resell your old computer because it’s not worth our time”.

If you don't want to refurbish them, then just stop offering the option to your customers. Acting in a different way than what you're signaling is in itself disrespectful.

Funny how they don't think the ultra high purchase price was disrespectful to the customer. I guess that's cognitive dissonance at work.

Edit: why disagree?

There is no reason to think the price a buyer is willing to pay a seller has any bearing on the price a seller is willing to pay a buyer to buy it back.

Has nothing to do with respect or disrespect.

That may be true. What we are discussing though is the illogical position that the author has that the buyback price is disrespectful while not feeling the initial sale price was disrespectful. There's clearly a disconnect for the author on what their opinion is and the machine is objectively worth both on the used market (ebay) and in comparison to machines with similar capabilities.

There is something strange going on if an offer offends you. Perhaps a fundamental misunderstanding of what price represents?

> There is something strange going on if an offer offends you. Perhaps a fundamental misunderstanding of what price represents?

Offers definitely can be offensive. E.g. you interview for a corporate software engineering role and get an offer to work for minimum wage, well below market. You won't take the offer of course, but how would it make someone feel?

I haven't gone through interviews prior to talking numbers before, so I can't draw on personal experience, but I expect you would feel pretty foolish for putting the cart before the horse and wish that you put a little more thought into what you were doing before acting. Offended, though?

Perhaps what you are suggesting is that in messing up by not finding out if the arrangement was broadly compatible before wasting your time on the minor details, but being afraid to blame oneself for the glaring mistake the mind might go to inventing that it was offended by their actions as a mechanism to sooth itself? I guess... Seems like stretch. I don't really understand the need to blame others, though.

Regardless, I'm not sure that transcends to the computer case. In that case the price was asked for upfront. Apple gave their offer and that was the end of it. No unwarranted time was wasted. Just a simple: "Looks like we won't be able to reach an agreement. Have a nice day."

Pretty much all trade-in prices offered by any company are way lower than what you'd get on eBay.

Whoever was setting the prices probably just set a sane low value on the basis that nobody was going to be trading this thing in so who cares?

I also assume the resale market is really small, and most people would choose cheaper alternatives.

Apple once offered me 0€ for a one-year-old 13in MacBook Pro. In fact they even wanted like 30€ for processing etc.

Or is it market value to Apple?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com